Part II - "Kearney,
The Trade Center for Buffalo County Freighting in the 1880's"

by Mardi Anderson

As homesteaders
claimed the land north and west of Buffalo County, freighting practices
changed. Distances traveled were shorter, 80 to 100 miles compared to
the
330 miles to the Black Hills. The loads were lighter by half than the
7,000
pound loads of flour, grain and mining supplies hauled up the
Kearney-Black
Hills Trail to Deadwood. Horses and mules were used for pulling instead
of oxen. Also, more farm wagons were used to carry freight during the
1880's.

Between
1880 and 1886, tons of freight were hauled out of Kearney annually,
most
of it destined for Custer County. Kearney was the nearest railroad
town,
and therefore, the nearest source of supplies. A Kearney newspaper
reported
on one occasion that at least 100 wagon loads of freight had come via
the
Union Pacific and the Burlington and Missouri River Railroads to
Kearney.
Most of it was hauled out during the week to Broken Bow and other towns
in Custer County. Later it was reported that "an unusually large amount
of freight" had come by rail to be hauled to Custer and Sherman
Counties.

There
were times when the freighters could not keep up with the demand. An
early
Custer County pioneer, Mrs. L. L. Crawford recalled, "We arrived at
Broken
Bow April 4, 1883, at 6 p.m. and there were seventy covered wagons
camped
on the southwest of the public square....So great were the crowds of
land seekers coming every day that there was a scarcity of provisions
as
everything had to be hauled overland from Kearney."

When this first hotel
was built in Broken Bow, all the lumber
and building supplies
were freighted by wagon from Kearney.
(Photo from Nebraska
State Historical Society)

During the
1880's freight was hauled for two purposes. One was to supply merchants
in Broken Bow and other Custer and Sherman County towns with lumber to
build their stores and goods to stock their shelves. The businessman
might
drive a wagon to Kearney himself to get the lumber and supplies, or he
might hire one or more freighters to drive teams for him. The other
hauling
was done by the homesteaders who brought their crops to market in
Kearney
and hauled back the supplies they needed on their homesteads.

One of
the earliest freighters was David Furbush of Loup City. A gentleman of
about 60, he freighted from Kearney for Lalk and Kreichbaum in the late
1870's. This routine job had its moments of excitement. One night late
in January, 1879, "Doc" Middleton and his gang of horse thieves were
known
to be in the Loup City area and suspected of planning a raid. A group
of
men set up a trap for him at the Loup bridge. A capture was made but it
was "soon discovered that their prisoners were David Furbush and his
two
large black mules" returning from Kearney with a heavy load of goods.

C. D.
Pelham came to Kearney to get supplies to stock the first store in
Broken
Bow. Sometimes he hired a neighboring farmer, John DeMerritt, to come
along
and drive a second wagon for him. When the first hotel was built in
Broken
Bow, all the lumber and building materials came from Kearney. After it
was open for business, the food supplies were also freighted in from
Kearney.

R. B.
Henchman opened a lumber yard in 1883, the first in Broken Bow. He sent
25 teams to Kearney to bring in the lumber for his initial stock.
During
the following year, not only was Henchman still hiring drivers to haul
his lumber from Kearney, but a second lumber company, opened by
Biggerstaff
and Hensley, also freighted their merchandise from Kearney. The Graham
Brothers freighted "an immense amount of dry goods" from Kearney in
1883.
John Hume and John Johnson were two freighters from Kearney who
arranged
for the hauling of goods to Broken Bow. On one occasion in May, 1886,
they
loaded 11 wagons, each with 2,500 pounds of goods. J. W. Preston hauled
lumber from Kearney to Ansley to build his new drug store when that
town
was first settled.

These
freighters hauled lumber to build businesses and merchandise to stock
the
stores when they were completed. They also hauled flour, binder twine,
and barrels of apples. Sometimes they were paid 50 cents per 100 pounds
of freight hauled from Kearney to Broken Bow. For a 2,500 pound load, a
freighter would earn $12.50. Sometimes the pay was $8 to $10 worth of
goods
in the store for which the man freighted.

Farm Freighting

Before the
homesteaders in Custer County had crops to sell, some brought loads of
wood to Kearney and sold it for $2 a load. Others brought cedar posts
or
deer meat to sell. Once the crops grew, they brought in wagon loads of
corn, wheat, and hogs.

Not all
of these settlers had wagons appropriate for hauling freight or teams
to
pull the wagons. In the case of Lyle Hunter, an early Custer
County
settler, after shelling his corn, he either borrowed a team and
wagon
or went along with some other homesteader who was bringing his corn to
Kearney.

Market
prices had an effect on what was brought in to be sold. In 1883 the
price
of wheat was 65¢ per bushel and the wagon loads of wheat rolled
into
Kearney. One Custer County farmer came in with 10 loads of White
Mediterranean wheat. The following year, after a second bumper
crop
of both wheat and corn, the prices dropped to 40¢ for wheat and
from
25¢ to 15¢ for corn. There were no reports of grain being
brought
in to sell that year. According to the Loup City newspaper, farmers
were
burning corn for fuel rather than selling it. Reports from the Stanley
(Amherst) area in Buffalo County indicate that farmers in that area
were
also burning corn for fuel. A harbinger of these depressed grain prices
was seen in late spring of 1884 when the Kearney New Era newspaper
reported, "Six wagon loads of fat hogs from Custer county came filing
into
town .... It is more profitable, it appears, for farmers in that
county to feed and haul in the large hogs than it is to sell the corn."
On another occasion, the following year, "A farmer from Custer county
came
in (to Kearney) with a double decked wagon....The lower deck
contained
six large hogs and the top one thirty fat turkeys." Then the
editorial
comment is added, "Hogs at $3.00 and $1 apiece for turkeys beats
selling corn at 15 to 20 cents." The price of wheat, however, had
gone back up in 1885 and again the Custer County farmers brought it in
to Kearney by the wagon load.

The freighters usually returned home with empty wagons after
delivering
their loads of goods, or, if the driver was from Custer or
Sherman
County, he came with an empty wagon and returned home with a load. The
homesteaders, however, did not always return empty-handed. They hauled
in loads of grain, hogs, or wood to sell. They brought back the
supplies
they needed to live and work on their homesteads. They might haul
flour, cornmeal, groceries, a beam for a hay sweep, or food and
clothing
to last until the next trip to town in about six months. Later, when
they
had crops to sell and could afford it, they started hauling lumber.
They
loaded up window and door frames for their sod houses and barns. They
bought
lumber for roofs on the sod houses and later for barns, sheds, and
houses
that replaced the soddies.

The Samuel Cannon family homesteaded near Westerville, about 12
miles east
of Broken Bow. According to Dean Cannon of Kearney, his grandmother,
Lottie,
was from the South. She refused to live in a sod house. His
grandfather
had to bring three 4-horse teams and wagons to Kearney to purchase
lumber
for one of the first frame houses in that area. When Solomon D.
Butcher's
family settled near Ansley, he hauled lumber from Kearney for their
house.
Once the frame houses were built, then there was a demand for
coal
to be hauled out of Kearney for these homes.

Living
along the Freight Routes

By 1884 most
of the land had been homesteaded between the two towns of Kearney and
Broken
Bow. Freight wagon drivers would stop at the homes of settlers along
the
wagon roads to spend the night. There were so many freighters on the
road,
nearly every house and stable would be filled and it was difficult to
find
a place to stay at night. A Custer county pioneer who did some
freighting
recalled, "We always had to take our grub with us and cook it in the
wagon
or at a freighter stop. We'd come to one of the regular stopping places
at night and cook our grub after they had already eaten. Then they'd go
to bed so we could come in and sleep on the floor. We always paid them
for the horses' hay (a quarter was the charge) the night before, so we
could get up early and cook our breakfast and be gone before they
wanted
to get out of bed."

Mrs. Alice Wilkinson Hanson, whose family homesteaded at Ansley,
recalled
that "team freighters used often to stop with us overnight. Sometimes
our
floor would be almost covered with
beds."

Living along a wagon
road could have a direct effect on the future of a
homesteader and his family. Robert Hunter, his wife and two daughters
had
come to Buffalo County in 1885 from Illinois. They settled on a farm
halfway
between present day Riverdale and Amherst, about four miles north of
the
Wood River. One route used by the freighters turned north from the Wood
River to reach the South Loup River at Sartoria. "in the summer of
1887-1888,
(Hunter) watched as long wagons and trains of freighter-wagons went by
his place from Kearney heading northward to....Broken Bow.... Kearney
was the big shipping point for provisions, materials and supplies; some
days, 50 wagons would wind their way up this trail past the Hunter
farm....Many stopped for the night at Hunter's and they told
interesting
stories about the Custer county area. Bob Hunter was so impressed by
these
freighters' descriptions that in the summer of 1889 he packed up his
family
and moved to Broken Bow. There he traded a broncho,harness and sulky for the
right to homestead a few miles north of that town.

The route
from Kearney to Loup City passed through John McGee's ranch on Beaver
Creek
at Sweetwater, on the border between Buffalo and Sherman counties. This
was one of the regular stops on the stage route between the two towns.
It was also used as a stopping place for freighters who were carrying
supplies
north from Kearney. McGee had a kind of hotel there for travelers to
use.

Another person who took advantage of having a wagon road past his home
was Sam M. Wright. This young man, along with various other relatives,
lived on the south side of the South Loup River, across from the point
where Elk Creek empties into the Loup. It was here that the wagon road
from the south and a mail route from Armada joined to cross the Loup.
Mr.
Wright set up a general store in a sod house here at Wrightsville. He
came
to Kearney to buy stock for his store which did a flourishing business.
Through the years the land changed hands, being bought by Ezra Wright
and
later by Waldo Flagg. The sod store was replaced by a frame building
across
the road and continued to serve that community for many years.

Jerome Lalone, a house painter in Kearney and a homesteader, purchased
land along the South Loup River a mile or so east of the Wrights. His
farm
also became a stopping place for freighters. He built a large,
two-story,
five-bedroom house on his property so he would have rooms to rent to
the
freighters who stopped for the night.

The days of wagon freighting in Buffalo County were numbered. Plans,
and
rumors of plans, for new railroad lines had been afloat for some time.
Soon some of these plans were to become reality.

SOURCES

Interviews with Dean Cannon and Claude Parish; Buffalo County Register
of Deeds Office; Buffalo County Historical Society archives; Custer
County
Historical Library files; KEARNEY
NEW ERA Oct. 1883-June 1886; CUSTER
COUNTY REPUBLICANSept. 1883; CUSTER COUNTY CHIEF Golden
Anniversary
issue; HISTORY OF BUFFALO COUNTY
by Bassett; BOOK OF FACTS
CONCERNING THE EARLY SETTLEMENT OF SHERMAN COUNTY by G. E.
Benschoter;
HISTORY OF CUSTER COUNTY, NEBRASKA by
Gaston & Humphrey; PIONEER
HISTORY OF CUSTER COUNTY NEBRASKA by S. D. Butcher; by B. H.
Chrisman; WHEN YOU AND
I WERE YOUNG, NEBRASKA! PIONEER STORIES OF CUSTER
COUNTY NEBRASKA by E. R. Purcell.